Choosing a cloud provider may seem like a trivial thing. You could go with the choice that most of the world has already made and pick the clear leader in the cloud space — AWS. However, as the public cloud market matures, the volume and range of relevant enterprise options expand. Depending on your requirements, you might find one of the other cloud providers out there more suitable, mainly because of the

When well implemented, cloud caters to the business need to be more agile, flexible and responsive. But many companies using cloud struggle to reap its full benefits. This often has less to do with cloud itself and more to do with how it’s managed across different functions. Most specifically, businesses are held back by outdated and decentralised funding and investment models, and by lines of business taking responsibility for IT deployment.

Just five years ago, the idea of using cloud services would have seemed wildly optimistic even to the most radical of businesses operating in the financial services sector. But cloud is no longer the new kid on the block. After becoming the word on everybody’s lips a few years ago, it has already plumbed what the Gartner Hype Cycle terms the ‘trough of disillusionment’; often experienced by new technologies as the doubters queue up to question the impact it can have....

Gartner recently reported that by 2020, the “cloud shift” will affect more than $1 trillion in IT spending. The shift comes from the confluence of IT spending on enterprise software, data center systems, and IT services all moving to the cloud.

With this enormous shift and change of practices comes a financial risk that is very real: organisations are spending money on services they are not actually using. In other words, wasting money.

The global public cloud services market is set to break the $200 billion mark, going to $208.6bn (£157.8bn) at a 17.2% increase by the end of this year, according to the latest prognostication from analyst house Gartner.

Gartner’s verdict comes primarily through the rapid growth of cloud system infrastructure services, which the analysts expect to grow 42.8% this year, with cloud application services – SaaS – growing at a 21.7% clip, to reach $38.9bn.

Editor’s note: This is the second part of a two-part series following up on the July piece ‘How the public cloud can benefit the global economy’, which drills down into two of the four areas outlined – better coordination of efforts between international entities, and increased speed of international transactions. The below is an image created by Chef Software which outlines the four towers. You can read part one, focusing on new business models and data sharing and...

With the latest VMworld event kicking off in Las Vegas, end user computing giant VMware came prepared with a litany of news releases. Yet the news was more of an update than anything completely new; an extension of the company’s hybrid cloud strategy, as well as the continuation of a partnership with IBM.

Editor's note: This article is a follow-up to the July piece ‘How the public cloud can benefit the global economy’, which drills down into two of the four areas outlined in that piece – how the public cloud enables new business models, and data sharing and collaboration between entities. The below is an image created by Chef Software which outlines the four towers.

Global revenues from public cloud services will hit more than $195 billion (£150.2bn) by 2020, according to the latest forecast from analyst house IDC.

The new prediction, which arrives in the firm’s semi-annual public cloud services spending guide, argues 2020 will double 2016’s expected revenues of $96.5bn, and represents a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20.4% between 2015 and 2020.

Deutsche Bank estimates AWS derives about 15% of its total revenue mix or has attained a $1.5B revenue run rate in Europe, while AWS is now approximately 6x the size of Microsoft Azure globally according to Deutsche Bank.

These and other insights are from the research note published earlier this month by Deutsche Bank Markets Research titled AWS/Cloud Adoption in Europe and the Brexit Impact written by Karl Keirstead, Alex Tout, Ross Sandler, Taylor McGinnis and Jobin Mathew. The...

Cloud is often seen as the answer to a wide range of business challenges from business innovation to cost reduction. However, there is uncertainty as to whether corporations should operate a model of public, private or hybrid cloud. Here, we will discuss the common perceptions and misconceptions surrounding public and private cloud and the benefits to the enterprise in the adoption of a hybrid model.

Public vs private cloud

A great deal has been written over the past few years about the financial benefit of migrating to the public or hybrid cloud for enterprises around the world. For enterprise looking for economic benefits of moving to the cloud, the main points have always been the ability to only pay for what you need, reduced operational cost, agility, availability, and elasticity.

The naysayers continue to point to the risks and the considerable labour involved in an enterprise-wide cloud migration. I...

Even though almost three quarters of the major UK councils say they use cloud technologies for data storage in some capacity, almost half say they are yet to formulate plans to use cloud computing.

That’s the main finding from not for profit IT service provider Eduserv, in responses provided by the top 100 councils in the UK. 44% of those polled said they did not have a strategy or IT policy in place – and of that number, only 15% say they are exploring or considering a...

Multi-cloud has been discussed within the cloud computing industry for a while, but there is still confusion about what it is and where it fits within the terminology of private, public, and hybrid cloud.

What most agree on is that multi-cloud is about mixing and matching the best-of-breed solutions and services from different cloud providers to create the most suitable solution for a business. It minimises the amount of vendor lock-in and gives organisations more flexibility with their...

A short research note from analyst house IDC argues how enterprise acceptance and adoption rates are driving strong growth of public cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS).

According to IDC forecasts, public cloud IaaS revenues are set to more than triple, from $12.6 billion (£9.5bn) in 2015 to $43.6bn in 2020, at a compound annual growth rate of 28.2% over that period. The public cloud IaaS market grew 51% in 2015, according to IDC, with that growth expecting to slow after...

A new research report from Veritas Technologies has found that while almost three quarters of enterprise adopt multiple private and public cloud strategies, the need for greater security and information management is vital.

As an information management software provider, this conclusion is hardly the most surprising from Veritas. Yet the statistics about continued hybrid cloud usage are worth the entrance fee. The manufacturing industry is the most assured in terms of migrating to the...

Talking to IT teams and business leaders, it is clear that the benefits of cloud in supporting new business models for the delivery across the public sector is now well understood.

There is also a growing consensus that the different business model for IT operations which is enabled by cloud IT, could add substantial value to the organisations – particularly local authorities - as they shape and reshape services in the future.

According to the latest research from virtualisation technology provider HyTrust, the software defined data centre (SDDC) is moving further towards the mainstream, with many regulated industries moving around half of their critical workloads over to SDDC and virtualisation.

The study, snappily titled ‘Industry Experience: the 2016 State of the Cloud and Software Defined Data Centre in Real World Environments’, surveyed more than 500 executives across a wide variety of...

A study released by VMTurbo argues more than half (57%) of organisations polled do not have a multi-cloud strategy in place.

The survey, which polled 1,368 organisations, also found 35% had no private cloud strategy while 28% did not have a public cloud strategy. VMTurbo was keen to note, however, that not having a strategy in this instance did not mean organisations had not examined a cloud strategy before dismissing it and sticking with on-prem; they had given adoption...

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